A year ago I was honored and blessed to be the team leader for Shimmy Mob Memphis. It was one of the greatest learning experiences of my life and certainly one of my greatest challenges. Looking back from the distance a year brings, the lessons are tapping me again on the shoulder as memories take me back to that time. This is what I wish to share with you today. But first, what is Shimmy Mob?Shimmy Mob is an event created by Sabeya, also known as Francesca Anastasi, international dancer instructor, choreographer and performer. Shimmy Mob is a choreographed and planned "Flash Mob" type event, aimed to be the largest event of its kind by having a huge geographical territory covered in one day to raise funds for local shelters protecting women and children. International headquarters is up in Canada, where Sabeya is based.I first heard about Shimmy Mob on March 28th 2011 and it called to my heart. I contacted Sabeya and asked her if anyone from Memphis had signed up. Cities from around the globe had signed up but there was no mention of Memphis. Her answer was no one from Memphis had. So on the evening of March 28th I listened to my heart and leaped. I signed our city up and agreed to become the team leader for Memphis. Memphis would be hosting a Shimmy Mob event to raise money for our local women's and children's shelter. It would be my job to enlist as many dancers as possible and get everything in place to dance on May 1st. This left us little time to get ready.By March 31st we had 27 dancers signed up and by April 5th we had 35 dancers and just 25 days to learn the choreography. We would be dancing with our belly dance sisters around the world, everyone doing the same choreography on May 1st, 2011. One of our local dance instructors agreed to lead rehearsals and to act as fundraising chair. One agreed to be my assistant. So I would have help, but there was still a lot of work for the three of us to do to pull this off.I did not know when I signed up for this job that adapt and adjust would become my mantra.One great challenge was the choreography which was a blending of different styles. Dancers joined from different groups and weren't trained in all the styles. There was a big learning curve. Many of the dancers had to learn new movements from other styles of dance and many of our dancers had never performed in public before. Some of our dancers were brand new and still learning basic moves. Yet each signed up for the cause and did their best to learn the dance. We were adapting, adjusting and learning.Finding a place to dance proved difficult. Unfortunately in the US there have been flash mobs which were distructive. Memphis has had police called out for flash mobs in the past. That history was making it difficult to find a place. I was hearing one 'no' after another when asking for a place to dance for less than five minutes. Some places wanted us to carry one million dollars worth of insurance. The most frequent answer I heard was 'no'. The date came closer and closer. I lined up one site. Then they backed out. Adapt and adjust I told myself as the search began again. Working with center city commission I was able to find a site downtown, on the cobblestones by the trolley line. Everything was finally set. But there was a bigger challenge to come.None of us knew when we signed up how great our challenges would be. We thought the biggest challenge would be the choreography itself. None could have predicted Memphis would battle flooding with the Mississippi River rising, or the many tornados which ran through our city.

On May 1st, we gathered on the Mid America Mall on the corner of Main Street and Peabody to perform the dance and heighten awareness of issues important to women. The women had one thing in common - the passion to make this unique event occur for the benefit of women and children requiring sanctuary

Here is the official video of our dance. What you won't see or hear are the mutliple starts and stops, the tornado sirens and the many times we moved back beneath shelter to get out of the rain. It took several attempts to get all the way through a dance which was less than five minutes. We did not give up. We were a bit tenacious. We kept on until we got the job done.As I was driving away, my phone rang. It was the photographer from the Memphis Commercial Appeal, our local paper, and he wanted to know if he'd missed us. He had indeed and because of the tornados and other extreme stories the news media was following, not one reporter was there to take notice of what we had done and report it to our fellow Memphians and the world. We were a small blip which did not even show on the news radar that day, as they passed us by for bigger stories.

We had pulled this off dodging tornados, extreme weather, flooding, illnesses and property damage. Any one of those things might have made another person back away and say, I can't do this, I have too much going on, and these challenges are too great.There were over a dozen lightning rods dancing in downtown Memphis that day dancing in between tornados though few were there to see us and I am proud to call them my Shimmy Mob sisters.Our efforts and tenacity did not go unnoticed. Sabeya of international shimmy mob, acknowledged Shimmy Mob Memphis by awarding us honorable mention for enduring perseverance in the face of danger and potential harm.http://www.shimmymob.com/dancers/acknowledgements/It was both an honor and a blessing to be acknowledged in this way.We pulled it off and made history! We did it in the face of tornados, storms and with the river rising. Weather didn't stop us, sound problems didn't stop us, and video problems didn't stop us. We have tenacity. We know how to adapt and adjust. That is how we raq in Memphis.In between tornado sirens we danced on May 1st and not only met our fundraising goal, we surpassed it. We doubled it.There will never again be another event just like the first Shimmy Mob event which took place in Memphis in 2011 and around the world and I am proud to say we showed them how we Raq in Memphis. I am proud of my Shimmy Mob sisters for never giving up or giving in, for taking the time and the energy to support a cause which helps many women and children.What I learned from my experiences leading this event in 2011 goes beyond what I can put into words here. I learned about tenacity, how to adapt and adjust sometimes quickly and somewhat frequently. I learned how people will rise to a challenge if you ask the best of them, if you encourage them. I learned it is not our difficulties that define our experiences but how we respond to those difficulties. I learned how deep people can reach into their hearts and their wallets to help people who aren't currently able to help themselves. These are lessons to carry for a lifetime.When I think of all the woman and children that will benefit from this event and how it unites us with our sisters all around the world, it makes my heart glad. This is why we dance. This is why I signed up on March 28, 2011 and this is why I signed up again as team leader for Shimmy Mob Memphis 2012.